01708 is the national dialling code for

Romford Romford is a large List of places in London, town in east London, east London, England, located northeast of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Havering, the town is one of the major Metropolitan centres of London, metropolitan centr ...

in the United Kingdom. The area it serves includes almost all of the

London Borough of Havering The London Borough of Havering () in East London, England, forms part of Outer London. It has a population of 259,552 inhabitants; the principal town is Romford, while other communities include Hornchurch, Upminster, Collier Row and Rainham, Lo ...

and some adjacent areas. When

STD code Subscriber trunk dialling (STD), also known as subscriber toll dialing, is a telephone numbering plan feature and telecommunications technology in the United Kingdom and various Commonwealth countries for the dialling of trunk calls by telephon ...

s were first introduced, Romford was assigned 0708 and 0402 was used for the rest of the current code area. After a sequence of changes in the early 1990s, culminating with

PhONEday PhONEday was a change to telephone numbering in the United Kingdom on Sunday 16 April 1995. A shortage of unique telephone numbers in the old dialling system meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult in certain areas of the country to assi ...

, the current 01708 code became active on 16 April 1995. All subscriber numbers within the area code consist of six digits. The code is used at eight telephone exchanges as part a linked numbering scheme. In common with all other British area codes the initial '0' is a

trunk prefix A trunk prefix is a digit sequence to be dialled before a telephone number to initiate a telephone call for the purpose of selecting an appropriate telecommunications circuit by which the call is to be routed. Making a domestic (national) teleph ...

that is not required when dialling Romford from abroad.

History

When STD codes were initially assigned, Romford was given the

mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

code RO8 (corresponding to 708 on the

rotary dial A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone numb ...

), with

Hornchurch Hornchurch is a suburban town in East London in the London Borough of Havering. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross. It comprises a number of shopping streets and a large residential area. It historically formed a large ancient par ...

and the rest of the area using the HO2 (402) code. With the transition to

all-figure dialling All-figure dialling was a telephone numbering plan introduced in the United Kingdom starting in 1966 that replaced the traditional system of using initial letters of telephone exchange names as the first part of a telephone number. The change affect ...

which ended the practice of representing STD codes with letters in 1966, and including the trunk prefix, these became 0708 and 0402. The 0402 code covered seven exchanges in a linked numbering scheme, with an additional digit for each exchange, as below. Internally, the 0402 code was translated to routing digits by registers to the same string of digits as 0708 plus an additional 8, which corresponded to the 8 in the local code from Romford Group Switching Centre to the local exchange. This technique was used to keep the dialled string down to the 10 digit limit that was imposed (though Stapleford only had 3 digit local numbers and South Ockendon 4 digits and so these could be dialled as 0708 8x xxx as well as the official 0402x xxx / xxxx.) The two codes operated as a single group for charging purposes in which all calls were priced at local rate. Additionally (and as is usual) calls to and from the adjacent charge groups were charged as local.Calls to and from numbers now in the 01268, 01277, 01322, 01375, 01474, 01689, 01959, 01992 and 020 codes were charged at local rate. The area was adjacent to the London telephone area and formed part of the London Telecommunications Region set up in the 1930s. The Upminster exchange was the last in the London region to convert from manual service in 1970 and the first to use the TXK system. The Stapleford exchange was the last in the region to use the UAX 13 Strowger automatic exchange system. After being decommissioned in 1992 the exchange, including the original building, became a working exhibit at

Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is an open-air museum of rescued buildings which have been relocated to its site in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. Founded in 1963 and opened in 1967, the museum was con ...

. In common with exchanges in areas adjacent to the London 01 area, local dialling codes were assigned. For example, Romford 5 digit numbers (which began with 2, 4, or 6) could be reached from 01 numbers by dialling 70 (instead of 0708), Romford 6 digit numbers (which began with 75 and were served by Romford South exchange) could be reached by dialling 3 instead of 0708 and Hornchurch numbers (5 digit) could be reached by dialling 49 instead of 04024. During the 1980s and early 1990s exchanges in the 0402 area gradually transitioned to 0708 and subscriber numbers were standardised at six digits. The 1979/80 code book shows South Ockendon as the first exchange to change code and subscriber numbers. By 1983 the South Ockendon change was shown to be complete and Purfleet numbers were in the process of being amended. After this was completed the code for the whole area changed on

in 1995 to 01708. The 0402 code was reused for mobile telephone numbers until it was abandoned again during the

Big Number Change The Big Number Change addressed various issues with the telephone dialling plan in the United Kingdom, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the country was running short of new telephone numbers. Overview The first was an update to a s ...

in 2000.

Coverage

The code serves almost the whole of the

in Greater LondonThe Hornchurch Marshes area is in the 020 area code with exchanges at

, Ingrebourne (in Harold Wood), Rainham and

Upminster Upminster is a suburb of east London, England, in the London Borough of Havering, northeast of Charing Cross. Historically a rural village, it formed an ancient parish in the Chafford hundred of the county of Essex. The economic history of ...

. There are three exchanges outside the borough in Essex at

Purfleet Purfleet-on-Thames is a town in the Thurrock unitary authority, Essex, England. It is bordered by the A13 road to the north and the River Thames to the south and is within the easternmost part of the M25 motorway but just outside the Greater ...

, South Ockendon and Stapleford.

Number allocation

Under the

National Telephone Numbering Plan In the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies, telephone numbers are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the ''National Telephone Numbering Plan'', w ...

the code operates with the following sub-ranges: The area code is subject to number conservation and the regulator

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and mail, postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-rang ...

restricts the size of number blocks that are allocated. The area code is expected to run out of subscriber numbers in 2028.

Notes

References

{{Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom

1708 In the Swedish calendar it was a leap year starting on Wednesday, one day ahead of the Julian and ten days behind the Gregorian calendar. Events January–June * January 1 – Charles XII of Sweden invades Russia, by crossing the ...

Infrastructure in London Media and communications in the London Borough of Havering Thurrock Epping Forest District Romford Telecommunications-related introductions in 1995